


hold back all my dark.

by redhoods



Series: and now it's got its hands inside you. [1]
Category: UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode 4 spoilers, M/M, Post-Canon, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role), the others are there too, void reverend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhoods/pseuds/redhoods
Summary: It starts like this.Clayton gasps awake on his bed in the Bullock Hotel and the first thing his eyes focus on is Reverend Matthew Mason in a chair across the room. He’s in casual clothing, down to shirtsleeves, his eyes are smudged dark, and he doesn’t say a word while Clayton wheezes and pats at his own chest.Then he stands, crosses the room, and leaves.
Relationships: Reverend Matthew Mason/Clayton Sharpe
Series: and now it's got its hands inside you. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582855
Comments: 16
Kudos: 164





	hold back all my dark.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to the discord server for honking at me about this one, it's strangely encouraging.
> 
> and thank you, jeff davis, for the wonderful void concept. (that's the only thing i'll thank you for, coward.)
> 
> uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. idk... this is a thing that happened.
> 
> title from jesus christ by brand new.

It starts like this.

Clayton gasps awake on his bed in the Bullock Hotel and the first thing his eyes focus on is Reverend Matthew Mason in a chair across the room. He’s in casual clothing, down to shirtsleeves, his eyes are smudged dark, and he doesn’t say a word while Clayton wheezes and pats at his own chest.

Then he stands, crosses the room, and leaves.

Silence echoes in his wake and it’s only a few minutes before the door swings open and Arabella is rushing in, eyes welling with tears. Miriam’s in the door frame behind her, smile fond but tight around the edges, “It’s very good to have you back, Mr. Sharpe.”

“It’s very good to be back, Miss Miriam,” he tries to say, but his voice scrapes raw and Arabella passes him a glass of water from the table by the bed and he drinks it greedily. His gaze drifts past Miriam but Matthew doesn’t make a reappearance.

\-----

Or maybe it starts like this.

The church hasn’t been repaired at all when Clayton pushes himself through the unlocked doors. Moonlight spills in from the hole in the wall and partially collapsed roof, casting eery shadows through the place. In the middle of the glowing white light, a pew has been turned to face the yawning side of the building to stare out at the black night.

Matthew is on the pew, back straight, shoulders tight, gaze unfocused, still smudged dark even weeks later. 

It’s very still and Clayton feels a rush of apprehension down his spine.

The Reverend doesn’t so much as twitch, “Something I can help you with, Mr. Sharpe?”

His voice is quiet even, flat, devoid of his usual warmth, fervor, and Clayton feels something lodge in his throat as he takes careful steps. The shadows seem to emanate from Matthew himself on the pew, not from the edge of the moonlight. Still Clayton sits next to him, “I wanted to thank you.”

That finally gets a reaction, a gradual slump to Matthew’s shoulders, “Whatever for?”

“They said you’re the reason I’m back,” he answers, even if they both already know.

Matthew’s gaze swings his way, so fathomless in the moonlight, the brown almost reflective, “You’re part of our family, Clayton, after everything we’ve seen, you can’t think we’d let something as simple as death take you away?”

That feeling tickles at the back of his neck again, “We?”

A smile curls at Matthew’s mouth, small and soft, warm like a flower blooming towards the sun, “You can’t think that I would.”

Clayton exhales, nods his head, “No, I can’t,” he agrees, and he’s the one to curl his hand around Matthew’s, but Matthew is the one to slide their fingers together, hold on almost too tight.

\-----

Or ( _fuck_ , Clayton thinks) it might start like this.

Matthew is an inferno of heat along his front, bracketing him against the wall of the cave, his chin pressing against the top of Clayton’s head. The shadows swell around them, swirling, obscuring everything to Clayton beyond the broad line of Matthew’s shoulders and the bare line of his throat down to the collarbones where his shirt has stretched wide against the laces.

He digs his fingers tight against Matthew’s sides as footsteps rush near, a thundering lot of them all furiously whispering to each other and he says a prayer to nothing, to the man in front of him maybe, to that bare expanse of skin, the press of rosary beads tight against his shoulder.

The footsteps fade but the shadows don’t abate and Matthew doesn’t relax.

“Matthew,” he says quietly, relaxes his grip. There’s no reaction yet and he can’t see Matthew’s face at this angle, just the taut line of his jaw. He presses his mouth there first, then to Matthew’s neck, the hinge of his jaw near his ear, “Matty, come back.”

The shadows are gone all at once.

And Matthew tries to pull away, but Clayton tightens his hold once more, meets Matthew’s dark gaze, “Clayton,” his voice is strangled, maybe afraid.

“There you are,” he says quietly and Matthew kisses him.

By the time they rejoin the others, his lips are red and swollen and Matthew has claimed a grip of his hand that’s almost too painful.

Almost.

\-----

And it changes like this.

Clayton’s walking to the church after escorting the ladies to Arabella’s newly emptied home. He’s warm through and almost to the first step when the world goes dark. It’s not the shadows that take him but burlap, a harsh voice that says, “Do you think your friends are willing to pay for you?”

And the following darkness is black unconsciousness.

\-----

And it goes like this.

His wrists are raw and there’s blood in his mouth no matter how many times he spits in the dirt. There’s a sluggishly bleeding cut on his arm that he’s not worried about, but a pain in side that he is worried about. The men around him are laughing, drinking even, so they don’t notice when the place starts to get dimmer, even with the fire and lanterns lit. 

Clayton does though and if he’s right, he thinks it might be a new moon behind all the clouds.

The shadows swell slowly, gently almost, creeping from the dark edges of camp, under tent flaps, the shadows of the men themselves growing long and grotesque. He counts to fifty-three before anyone notices, one of the men, more sober, one of the ones in charge tips forward in his chair and pokes at the fire, “Get another fuckin’ lantern, why the hell is it so dark?”

“All the lanterns are lit,” one of the others replies with a laugh that slowly subsides when he seems to realize what he’s said.

Several heads swivel his way and Clayton grins with blood on his teeth, “I think your payment is coming.”

Another one, one of the drunker ones, that’s missing more teeth than he’s got, kicks him in the ribs, “Stop it, freak.”

Clayton laughs even though his ribs are aching something fierce, his shoulder slamming against the dirt, “I’m not doing anything,” he says calmly, as the shadows swell big suddenly, encompassing several of the lanterns in darkness.

Some of the drunker men start panicking, a young one, a kid whose hands are shaking so bad he can’t load his pistol, “Maybe we should just let him go.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the man in charge snaps as he cocks a shotgun,, “There’s only four of them and nine of us.”

“Is there?” Clayton asks, mostly to be a shit but they all start scrambling towards each other and there’s only six of them now.

“Close ranks!”

“Get close!”

The last of the lanterns gets swallowed and all that’s left is the fire, dimmed down to just enough to see the outline of the men that took him by. Satisfaction blooms in Clayton’s chest, vindication even. Perhaps he should be worried about the veracity of it, perhaps he will be later.

When one of the idiots isn’t holding a pistol against his scalp, shouts to the darkness, “We’ll shoot him!”

“I’d think twice about that if I were you, son,” and Matthew emerges, shadows parting around him like smoke. It curls around him, like strips of dark ribbon around his wrists and throat, drifting away to join with the rest of the pitch black behind him.

The man drops his pistol, but shadows are already curling around him as he shouts.

A shot rings out and another body drops into the dirt.

“Some visibility, Matthew!” Aloysius calls and the shadows slide away slowly as the men scramble, try to run but get picked off by successive shots, though Clayton sees the man that had pulled the pistol on him get dragged away by nothing but shadow.

Arabella swans into his view, dropping her gun into the dirt as she hauls him upright, “Clayton, are you alright?”

His eyes land on Matthew and he nods, “Much better now.”

\-----

And sometimes it’s like this.

Clayton’s in his corner of the Gem, holding the place up like a pillar with a glass of whiskey half forgotten in his hand because across the room, Matthew’s chatting with some out of town folks and playing cards, shoulders loose. Miriam is next to him and she bumps their shoulders, says what’s undoubtedly a dirty joke that has Matthew howling with laughter, even as red creeps up the back of his neck.

His head turns a little and his still smudged dark gaze lands on Clayton, his smile smoothing into something gentler.

The shadows around Clayton swell, darken a little, and Matthew winks at him before he turns back to his conversation, but the shadows stay where they surround him.

(Later, when Arabella comes in, she does a double take before she seems to actually realize he’s sitting there, her head shaking fondly as she walks over to join him, “Almost didn’t see you there.”)

\-----

And other times it’s like this.

The bed dips hard and Clayton’s awake in an instant, though he’s not sure why.

Everything around him is darkness but the vague shape of Matthew on the bed next to him, eyes clenched tightly shut as he mutters in his sleep, shoulders shifting against the mattress as he twists in his sleep, the sheets tangled around his legs.

He shouts out something, though Clayton doesn’t understand it.

Hell, he thinks it’s Latin for all that he knows of the language.

Unsure, he reaches out, presses his palm against Matthew’s bare shoulder, “Matthew,” he tries, too soft. So he shakes his shoulder, nearly shouts over Matthew’s increasingly panicked babbling, “Matty!” 

The shadows snap tight around them and the world inverts and Clayton can only make out Matthew above him, pale white even in the absolute darkness that surrounds him. Matthew’s hand is heavy on his chest and his eyes are pieces of glinting jet.

“Matty,” he tries again, curling his hand around Matthew’s forearm.

And Matthew blinks, the shadows dissipate like smoke sinking through the floorboards, “Clayton,” he says weakly, then slumps all at once. His weight crushes Clayton into the mattress and Clayton doesn’t care, wraps around him as much as he can, carding his fingers through Matthew’s hair while Matthew trembles against him.

They don’t talk for the rest of the night, but they don’t sleep either.

\-----

And then it’s like this.

“He opened the door,” the thing that is sometimes Matthew but is not currently Matthew tells them all.

There are bodies around him, shadows curling around them, hanging low to the ground like black fog though this fog separates around Clayton in a several foot radius. The fog is closer to the others, but not touching them even as Arabella kicks at it with her foot, it spreads wide.

The thing smiles with Matthew’s face and it’s neither kind nor warm, but it’s not threatening either. It spreads his hands wide at his sides. “He opened the door and let me in so that I would keep you safe.” This it says to all of them, but it is looking at Clayton with glinting jet eyes, “I like keeping you safe, but he likes it more,” it says again, to Clayton.

He exhales, “Well, I suppose I appreciate you keeping me safe,” he says carefully.

The smile stretches wider, a little too grotesque, too sharp as the shadows rise around it like a cloak, “Good,” it says, voice like thunder in the distance.

Miriam makes a noise behind him and Clayton swallows, asks slowly, “May we have Matthew back?”

It rolls Matthew’s head around, like it is considering then it’s head snaps to the right, “But you are not safe yet,” it’s voice is a whisper, “You only have two bullets in your left, one in your right, you may wish to reload,” then it—Matthew—disappears in a swell of shadow.

“Fuck,” Clayton hisses and sets about reloading his guns as fast as he can.

There’s shouting from a few yards away, around the end of the canyon where they’d been ambushed.

“I’m not letting him—it? That thing have all the fun,” Aloysius decides suddenly and charges off with his rifle against his shoulder.

“Well okay then,” Arabella declares delicately.

Clayton shakes his head, glances at Miriam who only nods sharply once at him, before they both set to follow the others.

\-----

And that leads to this.

“Word is,” this oily man says to him, while Clayton glares and tries to swallow around the rope in his mouth, wondering how it is that this has happened to him _again_ , “that there’s a man who would do anything to get you back.”

This is not a bandit, not some idiot with a death wish, but he’s not near as clever and smart as he seems to think he is.

It’s getting dark outside the windows.

The man in his neat suit, slicked back hair, is sitting in a chair, facing the door, his hands laced over his middle. Too calm for a man that’s heard things, so maybe he’s not heard the right things, enough things. They hadn’t left any of the last group to take Clayton alive. He turns his head to speak though, since he’s left Clayton on the floor only feet from him, “I’m interested to see how far he is willing to go.”

Clayton snorts around the rope.

“Men like that are the sort of men I like to employ,” he goes on and he really has no clue what he’s gotten himself into then.

He’s expecting just a man to burst through that door.

He’s not expecting Matthew, certainly not expecting the thing that is not Matthew.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and the man leans in his chair to peer out the window, “Must be a big storm,” he says calmly. He stays calm when the screams start, though not a single shot goes off, even as the screaming continues and the man starts to shift in his chair.

Clayton snorts again, though seems to be unheard as the man leans forward in the chair towards the door. Then with the hand he’s managed to free with the blade that stays under his belt, he pulls the rope from his mouth, “You’ve made a big mistake.”

When the door slams open, shadows spilling in, the man is tied to the chair and Clayton’s holding the man’s gun to his head. The poor bastard is trembling, eyes so wide that Clayton’d be worried they were going to pop out if he even gave a damn.

“Hello, darling,” Clayton says calmly, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.

“Ah,” it’s the thing that is not Matthew still, eyes black as pitch, shadows coiling, “this is a surprise,” it says, sounding delighted somehow. There’s a gentle roll and Matthew blinks, the shadows slinking from his eyes, drifting off of him as it retreats back to the corners where it belongs, “Clayton?”

“What the fu—”

Clayton cracks the man in the temple with the butt of the weapon and he slumps against the ropes, “Sorry bastard,” he says and drops the pistol a few feet away on his path to Matthew. Uncaring, he slams right into Matthew, presses his face into his shoulder, mumbles, “Lets go home.”

Matthew doesn’t say anything, loops an arm around his shoulders and turns to lead him out of the building.

There are groaning bodies everywhere and Aloysius is whistling a song to himself as he ropes some of them together in an odd tangle of rope and limbs that’s gonna be a bitch for the poor bastards in about twenty minutes easily. Arabella seems to be practicing her knot work on a couple of other men a few feet from that and Miriam is in the process of lining up a collection of knives and blades about fifty feet from all of them.

“Man, you’ve got to stop doing this,” Aloysius says when he looks up finally.

Clayton flips them off and relishes in the tightening of Matthew’s arm around him.

\-----

And then this is somehow a thing that happens in Clayton’s life. (Unlife? He’s not sure.)

Matthew is sturdy and broad beneath him, chest rising and falling evenly, heart thudding steady under Clayton’s ear. His fingers are gently detangling Clayton’s hair in a way that’s sparking little pricks of painpleasure but also left him sort of drowsing, so he almost misses when Matthew rumbles out, “It likes you.”

“What?” he slurs, a little unintelligibly, blinking cause he hadn’t even been aware he’d closed his eyes.

The fingers in his hair don’t stop so Clayton lifts his head, digs his chin against Matthew’s sternum to peer up at him, finds Matthew looking right back, other arm tucked under his head in a way that makes his bicep bunch distractingly. Matthew’s mouth twists a little, “It likes you,” he says again.

Clayton blinks at him, waiting for his muggy mind to catch up, when it finally does, “Oh,” he says absently, then, “The fucking shadow monster in your head _likes_ me?”

“Yeah,” Matthew admits almost sheepishly, like somehow it’s his fault that the thing that is not Matthew but sometimes is has taken a liking to one of its charges. “I don’t know how to explain how I know, but uh, it’s a big fan of your...” he trails off, his hand stilling in Clayton’s hair.

“What?” Clayton asks and rubs his chin over Matthew’s skin, “Don’t tell me it likes my ass too.”

That finally makes Matthew crack, a quick startled laugh escaping him, and his fingers curl, tug a little at Clayton’s hair in a way that makes him groan quietly, “No, no, it just likes the way you work, it thinks you’re very efficient at shooting people and it’s a big fan.”

Clayton blinks at him.

Matthew shrugs helplessly under him.

“Well,” he says eventually, as Matthew’s fingers are trailing down his spine, “It could want to feed me to the shadows? So I guess that’s... fine? Preferable?”

“True,” Matthew’s eyebrows are doing weird things, like he wants to argue but can’t come up with a good argument

Tilting his head, Clayton pushes himself up using Matthew’s chest, sliding a little down his body, “Don’t tell me your jealous of the shadow thing?”

The reaction is near instant, the way Matthew’s face floods with color and his eyebrows draw together, hands finding Clayton’s hips, “No, of course not, that would just be silly,” he rambles out in rapid succession, “It’s not even a real being, it’s not like it could—”

Clayton kisses him to stop him from embarrassing himself further.

\-----

And then this happens.

Clayton isn’t the one taken for once, which he takes the ribbing with a grim smile, as they follow a trail from the church towards the graveyard and beyond. Worry rolls in him, but maybe it should not. If Matthew was taken, Matthew perhaps let himself be taken.

The shadow thing that is not Matthew surely wants to protect Matthew as well, right?

He’s never asked the terms of Matthew’s bet, none of them have, and now it settles unpleasantly in his belly as he follows a trail of blood that looks like pitch.

It doesn’t stop, the trail that is.

Every so often, there will be another drop or several drops, a splatter of it in one place that looks like Matthew spit out a mouthful of blood. Clayton is no longer the only one tight with concern, he sees it reflected in the others now, that burning question. Does not Matthew give a shit about actual Matthew and if so, why hasn’t he returned to them?

For three days, they follow the trail further and further from Deadwood, further and further from civility.

Arabella’s got a feral edge to her smile that Clayton can appreciate.

And before they’d set out this morning, he’d seen Miriam pass two vials over to Aloysius that they’re all well familiar with now.

They come upon a house, though that’s generous.

It’s an old farm, overtaken in some places, barren in others, the barn collapsed in. 

The house stands, a solitary sentinel, the only thing for large swathes of land, no chance for them to sneak up to the place unless they wait for the cover of night.

“The shadows have done us well as of late,” Miriam says quietly, her hand around Arabella’s arm, because Arabella’s got the look of someone about to charge in and Clayton doesn’t know which of them to root for any longer.

Aloysius exhales, silent and still as he watches the house, though they’re too far to make anything out of the place aside from an occasional figure emerging from inside. The person, whoever they are, simply steps to the edge of the porch, looks out, then returns into the house.

Adjusting his hat, Clayton thumbs over the beads of Matthew’s rosary, wrapped too tight around his wrist, “Night fall it is.”

And they wait on their asses in the dirt as the sun slowly dips behind the horizon.

Clayton breaks from their position at the edge of the treeline, strolling right for the house. Not even the grass is high enough to hide them, there’s no point in trying to sneak this far away. 

The figure never comes out of the house once they break from the treeline and it isn’t until they’re a some yards out that Clayton realizes there’s no light or noise coming from inside the house. A shiver rolls down his spine and he hesitates, glances over his shoulder and sees the other doing the same.

Taking a deep breath, he continues forward, edges up the few steps to the front door quietly.

At the front door, it is not quiet, it is an absence of sound.

All he can hear is the thud of his own heartbeat in his ears.

He kicks in the door with Aloysius at his shoulder, rifle ready.

The inside of the house is pitch black.

Clayton is the first one to move, strolls right into the dark, breath caught in his chest. He holds it until his lungs burn, but when he breathes, the air is clean, crisp, like he’s standing in a forest in winter, not in some old rotted house at the beginning of summer.

The ominous feeling that’d clung to the edges of him is gone.

“Matty,” he calls, taking further steps into the darkness, unsure of where he’s going or why he’s trusting the darkness to take him there.

“Ah, you did come,” the world opens up suddenly in front of him, like he’d been walking down a dark corridor, and it is Not Matthew, tied to a chair. There is blood down his chin and soaking the front of his shirt, one of his eyes is swollen shut, and that’s without Clayton drawing his gaze below his neck.

The eyes are still black pools glinting at him in the moonlight that hadn’t been outside.

“What’s going on?” Clayton asks, because there’s something not right about him or this place or all of it.

Not Matthew smiles at him, a bloody grimace of stained red teeth.

It’s not at him, it’s behind him.

Clayton turns and there’s a woman there in a red waistcoat, a nasty looking blade in her hand.

The woman arches a brow at him, “And who are you?”

Not Matthew laughs.

“I’m here for him,” Clayton says, “Who the fuck are you?” In his peripheries, he’s aware of the shadows moving, swelling, growing, stretching, and he doesn’t know what that means, but he’s not afraid.

“She wanted me,” Not Matthew says behind him, sounding so unbearably pleased and smug about the current situation, “she thought she could taunt me out, then she thought she could cut me out,” it says, and a bird screams outside of the house.

The woman’s head tilts at him, “So it’s you then, you bring it out,” her lips are waxy blood red and there’s a spot of it on her teeth that’s distracting from her overall effect.

Also Clayton thinks the most dangerous thing in the room is behind her with a Deringer leveled at the back of her neck. He does his best not to draw attention to Miriam though, simply snorts softly, “Lady, you’ve made a big mistake,” he says.

There’s an almighty creaking behind him and Clayton steps to get his eyes on more, watches the thing that is sometimes Matthew, with all his strength, push and push and push at the ropes binding him and it’s not the ropes that give way but the chair beneath him.

“Well damn,” Clayton says quietly and the grin he gets is more Matthew than shadow, even pained as it is.

That’s new, though, the half shadow half Matthew thing that he is witnessing, the brown of Matthew’s irises visible in the pitch of the rest of his eyes, “About time you joined the party, sweetheart,” he manages, spits more blood onto the floor where the splintered pieces of the chair lay.

The shadows drift a little, drawing towards Matthew and reveal Aloysius, rifle pointing at the woman’s chest, “You alright there, Father?”

“Think I might miss this week’s sermon,” Matthew replies.

“A new trick of yours?” Arabella asks as she steps out of the darkness to Aloysius’s left, right towards Matthew. She’s not got a gun drawn, but her medical kit is in her hands.

The woman clears her throat and none of them pay her any mind.

Matthew clears his throat, accepts a cloth that Arabella hands him, trying futilely to rub away the blood around his mouth, “Ah, our _friend_ and I came to a sort of agreement, I think,” he answers, “As much as that thing agrees to anything.”

“Aside from liking Sharpe’s ass,” Aloysius mutters.

The woman clears her throat again.

“Oh do shut up,” Miriam says from behind her and the woman actually startles.

Clayton doesn’t think the woman realizes the shadows are curling up her legs, “He’s ours and we’re not letting anything take him from us,” he tells her without looking at her, looping his arm around Matthew’s back.

If she replies, attempts to anyways, it’s lost to the silence of the shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @vowofenmity on twitter.
> 
> sorry, brian.


End file.
